


Ice, Ice Baby

by thegirlgrey



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abominable Snow Stiles, Abominable Snowman Stiles Stilinski, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Jack Frost Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-06 12:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4221975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlgrey/pseuds/thegirlgrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There’s no way I can convince you that you ate some bad rabbit, and you’re having some wicked crazy indigestion is there?”</p><p>Derek's eyes are flitting between the snow and Stiles, more specifically the small area where the snow isn’t falling on Stiles but being drifted away like he’s covered in some sort of force field.</p><p>“Not a chance in hell.”</p><p> </p><p>Or the one where Stiles was telling Matt the truth, sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in my draft folder for, what's it's been almost 3 years since season 2? Yeah, that long. I figured I'd finish it. Plot is set a year or so ahead of season 3. Allison is alive because she deserved better than what Jeff Davis could give to her. (I'm still a firm believer that Erica and Boyd are on some tropical island somewhere in love and enjoying life.)

Stiles should know better. He really should. The second you let your guard down in this town something happens. The last time he let his guard down he had to deal with a nest of Arachnes. The time before that it was an Shōjō (and speaking Japanese while drunk at your Senior prom is not easy), before that was the Brownies, and, even way before that, he was possessed by an evil fox spirit.

So yeah, he knows better. Except that he was sure that everyone was busy today. He made sure. He bought Scott and Kira tickets to a concert in Sacramento. Liam was at the station with the Sheriff logging some community service hours for his senior year. Allison is teaching Lydia some self defense moves. Cora and Isaac are terrorizing people at the mall as they finish their last minute Christmas shopping. Derek was supposed to be a town over by now getting supplies for his next remodeling project. He’s not supposed to be three miles into the preserve looking at Stiles like he’s actually grown a second head. Stiles sighs.

“There’s no way that I can convince you that you ate some bad rabbit, and you’re having some wicked crazy indigestion is there?”

Derek eyes are flitting between the snow and Stiles more specifically to the small area where the snow isn’t falling on Stiles but being drifted away like he’s covered in some sort of force field.

“Not a chance in hell.”

Derek takes a steps forward stopping at the edge just between where the snow is falling naturally and isn’t.

“Explain. Now.”

Stiles rubs his hand through his hair and sighs again. He looks up at Derek. He looks more wary and confused than angry and betrayed. Three years can change people. Stiles takes a breath and manipulates the snow so that Derek’s inside the little barrier he’s created. Derek stiffens for a moment before he relaxes again. He trusts Stiles. Stiles’ shoulders lose a bit of their own tension. He doesn’t know what he would have done if Derek wouldn’t have accepted it, wouldn't of accepted him.

“Well, once upon a time-”

Derek stalks closer to him, eyes narrowing.

“ _Stiles_.”

Three years can change people but not entirely. Stiles waves his hands in the air.

“Fine, geeze. Long story short my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was Jack Frost. Old Man Winter himself. He fell in love with my great whatever grandmother. She fell into a river and would have drowned, but he saved her by gifting her with some of his abilities. It got passed down generation to generation, and here we are.”

He commits Derek’s utterly shocked face to memory. He doesn’t get to see it often.

“You’re not lying.”

Just admitting that, finally sharing it with someone, hits Stiles like a two by four to the gut. He sits down hard on the snow covered ground unconcerned about the cold and wet.

“Nope.”

Derek looks at him some more. His face is a lot more open now and easier to read. Right now, Stiles reads acceptance and a little bit of confusion. Derek tries to give him a wry grin, but it settles wrong on his face. Stiles lifts a shoulder in a _what can you do_ kind of way. Derek drops down next to him. He's close enough for Stiles to feel his body heat.

“My mom said I was snow spelled.”

Derek nods solemnly. He clears his throat after a beat of silence.

“Does anyone…” Derek lets his sentence trail off.

“Know? Just Deaton and my dad.”

Stiles shrugs at Derek’s impressed look.

“Not even Scott?”

Stiles snorts.

“He had enough on his plate. He still does. Besides, it never came up.”

He can feel Derek’s eyes on him. When he turns, he can see the confusion on his features.

“My powers didn’t manifest until after my mom died. That’s how it works. It’s inherited. She never told Dad about it. He just thought we ran cold. She told us later though before it got bad. I thought they were all stories. I didn’t realize it was true until…”

He shakes himself and pulls his thoughts away from dark memories and how pretty his mom’s service was in the soft snow.

“Scott, he suspects something. He always did, especially after becoming all True Alpha, but he's always known that I’ll tell him when I'm ready. But then everything went to shit, and it keeps going to shit, and we never have time to have the big frosty conversation.”

Stiles plays with the snow on the ground at his feet as Derek takes it all in. If there’s one thing that Stiles has always known without a doubt, it is that Derek is always listening. The one thing that Stiles has learned though? It is that Derek talks. He talks just about as much as Stiles when motivated. He talks when he’s ready and when he wants to. Stiles just has to wait him out. He’s gotten pretty good at it over the past few years.

“I heard your heart. You weren’t really lying when you told Matt that you were the abominable snowman, not really.”

Stiles grins at the look Derek’s giving him. It’s like it was bugging Derek because he couldn’t figure out why it wasn't really a lie. He held onto it for three years. Stiles finds some kind of satisfaction that it’s bugged Derek for that long.

“I don’t turn into some white, furry yeti. I just have some pretty neat tricks.”

Derek looks up and around where the little barrier is still keeping the snow from falling on them and soaking their jackets. Derek lifts a hand, palm out, to gesture to it. Stiles laughs.

“I can manipulate the temperature. It’s easier to do when it’s cold already. Water is easy, but I can pretty much freeze anything, cool it down, ice it over, etc.”

Derek raises an eyebrow that Stiles clearly translates into _not good enough_.

“Jack is the element. Jack _is_ winter. He’s the real deal. I’m…”

For all the animosity they’ve had between them over the years, Derek probably gets him better than Scott most days.

“He’s a god, and you’re a demigod?”

Stiles blinks in surprise.

“Nice analogy. I was going to say he’s the freezer, and I’m the fridge. But yeah, man. That’s cool. I’m going to steal that.”

Derek smiles and tosses some snow at him. Stiles easily swats it away.

“You don’t get sick.”

Once again, Derek’s observations are right on the money. Stiles raises his hand palm up and manipulates three flakes into rotating there. White flurries making up their own little dance just for Stiles. He smiles as Derek watches, fascinated

“It’s rare, but we do get sick. My mom…”

He has to take a second to breathe past the tightness in his chest.

“It kept her with us longer. The magic or whatever, it slowed the cancer’s progress, but it also drug it out. It, it was bad at the end. It was almost a relief to know she didn’t have to bare it anymore.”

Derek is quiet for a moment. Stiles’ mother and his memories of her are always handled with care, just like Derek’s family. Then he looks back up at Stiles.

“You age slower too. You look younger than everyone else.”

He shrugs again.

“I think that’s kind of like the cold you know? It slows everything down. I was always little, underdeveloped for my age. And my temperature is a little lower than normal, not crazy but enough to worry if someone were to really look.”

“You’re heart beat is faster than normal.”

He nods, and shoots Derek a sly smile.

“Blood needs to pump faster to keep me kicking. The ADHD is a side effect too, or so Deaton thinks. My brain and body works faster to counteract my powers.”

Derek goes quiet and contemplative. Stiles decides to say screw it, Derek’s already caught him, and starts to manipulate the snow again. It’s coming down a little harder now. He could slow it down if he wanted to. He could stop it completely. Instead, he lets it fall. Derek is staring at him with a look of confusion when Stiles gets tired of watching the snow and turns back to him.

“What?”

Derek seems to notice his staring and shakes his head. A smile starts to spread across his face.

“I don’t know how I didn’t know.”

Stiles snorts. It’s hard to make those connections about Stiles for a reason. His father is also the Sheriff for a reason. He knows how to bury a trail.

“You ever wonder why Deaton has a metal tub in his back room big enough to fit a fully grown adult or a really tall werewolf? Or an industrial strength ice maker for an animal clinic?”

That gets Derek’s attention. He sits up straighter again; his attention focused solely on Stiles.

“He stayed in Beacon Hills for you.”

Stiles starts gathering snowflakes into the palm of his hand. It looks like a miniature blizzard. It gives him something else to do instead of look at Derek.

“Your mother isn’t the only one with a son that he promised he would look after.”

Stiles creates a snowball, ices it over, and shatters it.

“He’s done a pretty crap job of it.”

Derek doesn’t say anything. He has his own issues with Deaton. It’s gotten better, but he still doesn’t like the Emissary. Stiles doesn’t either really.

“Still, I should have noticed. When you held down Isaac’s legs, you didn’t react to the cold.”

He nods giving time for Derek to think this through, to make the connections he always knew Derek was accumulating, hoarding. The dude might not have been the best werewolf around, especially back then (and don’t get Stiles started on how much he utterly failed as an Alpha), but nobody could ever say Derek wasn’t observant or could hold onto suspicions or grudges.

“When that vampire bit you?”

Derek rests a hand over Stiles' left forearm where her fangs would have sliced right through if Stiles were a normal human.

“Froze my arm solid and broke her teeth. Then Scott broke her.”

Derek makes an assessing sound. He was there, pulling Stiles out of the way, ripping at the sleeve of his shirt to see the damage that wasn't there. 

“The vampires, they weren’t terrified of Scott. They were terrified. Of you.”

Stiles laughs at the memory of their shocked faces and how they seemed to pale more, quite the feat what with them not having a pulse, when Scott told them Stiles was the one they’d have to deal with if they ever came back.

“They couldn’t get a read on me. My core temperature reads low, but my heart was racing.”

Derek eyes him with something akin to curiosity.

“You made the leader kneel. It wasn’t Kira’s shockwave.”

Stiles grins at him.

“I had a history final to study for.”

“How?”

He turns his body to face Derek.

“You know how I said I can manipulate the temperature?”

Derek nods. Stiles grins.

“Any temperature. The weather, the temperature of water, even body temperature.”

Derek blinks at him. Stiles pulls together a snowball in his palm, melts it in a blink of an eye, and freezes it again before letting it drift apart and back into the soft flurries falling from the sky.

“They were a little below room temperature. It wasn’t hard to manipulate Boss Dracula. He was basically a lukewarm popsicle.”

He thinks he sees Derek’s lips twist before his scowl smoothes back into place.

“During the heat wave last summer, when you got sick, you did something to the temperature in the loft.”

Derek has his disapproving face on. It’s not much different from his angry face. It’s really the eyebrows that make the difference. Stiles looks down, ashamed and a little amused.

“Yeah. You guys run hot, so if I was miserable, I knew you had to be worse. I froze the walls solid.”

Derek looks like he wants to tell Stiles how stupid that was. But he’s long since learned that he can’t boss Stiles around. Derek is, kind of, his best friend. It’s still surprising when Derek gets a contemplative look on his face and asks his next question.

“Why’d you get sick?”

Stiles takes a second to note the concern in Derek's voice before he finds his words again.

“I’m a demigod right? I can’t change the weather, only influence it. When it’s cold like this, it’s nothing. But when it’s warm… I basically channel the ice in my veins. I manipulate my temperature by transferring my “chill.” The universe is big on balance you know.”

He nudges Derek’s shoulder with his own.

“I can do little things with barely any side effects. I can freeze a can of coke or ice a burn with my bare hand and get lightheaded for a second or two. Freeze a lake to ice skate in late spring? It’ll make me sick, like really sick. It looks similar to meningitis. My temperature will rise too fast. My body will burn itself from the inside out.”

Stiles suppresses a shiver.

“Never trying that again.”

Derek looks at him incredulously.

“When I was paralyzed by the Kamina, in the pool, you didn’t feel cold.”

It’s been a long time since Stiles came to the realization that Derek Hale was kind of smoking hot. The fact that he has been exposed to a naked Derek too many times to count over the years doesn’t make him less smoking hot. If Stiles' cheeks are rosy, he’s going to blame it on the cold or overexertion.

“I was using the temperature of the water as a power boost. I was basically running regular human hot.”

Derek raises an eyebrow. Stiles rolls his eyes.

“Dude, I held all 200 pounds of your werewolf ass above water in a freezing cold pool for two hours. A normal person would have had hypothermia within half an hour.”

Stiles shakes his head.

“And like I said, using my spark out of season kind of drains me. I was pretty much tapped out after that. I was barely keeping upright in the parking lot.”

Derek nods, already understanding.

“So the tub. You use it to bring your temperature back down.”

“Pretty much. It’s like a docking station to recharge. I’ve only used it maybe four times.”

Derek stares at his boots for a silent minute. When he speaks, his voice is low and neutral. It’s the tone he uses when he’s already come to an answer in his head, and it unnerves him.

“Did the Alphas know about you? That’s why they waited for summer to strike?”

Stiles thumps the outside of his own boot against Derek’s.

“No, I think that was just a really bad, or good, depending on the way you look at it, coincidence. On some level, they knew I was different, just like you and Peter and Scott did. Deaton is right. The bottom line is that I am a spark, a conduit for magic. I am channeling the power Jack Frost gave my ancestors. I wasn’t meant to have it, so my body found a way to work around it with the ADHD. That’s why I can use the mountain ash and can perform some rituals.”

“Why the layers?”

“16-year-old me would have had an aneurism by now. Derek Hale, playing 21 questions and no threat of bodily harm made yet.”

Derek gives him a flat stare, but Stiles can see the corner of his mouth twitch. They’ve been friends for too long. Stiles shrugs, plucking at his hoodie under his thick winter coat.

“To help blend in. I don’t really touch anyone but my dad or Scott, and they're used to it. I do have it on good authority that my hands feel like ice, though. It doesn’t hurt me to be warm. I kind of crave it actually.”

Derek quirks a brow. Stiles spreads his hands out in front of him, racking his brain to try and find the words to explain.

“Cold to me is like the full moon to you. It’s power. It’s heady.”

He takes a breath and clenches his hand into fists.

“And it absolutely fucking terrifies me.”

Derek is listening to him intently, completely focused on him. Stiles feels like a weight’s been lifted from his chest. He’s never realized how hard it was to hold this all in. But Derek is here, listening, accepting, supporting him. It gives him the strength to keep talking.

“I know my limits. I’ve learned them the hard way. But it’s so easy to become used to something. It’s why I don’t come out here as much anymore when it’s in the dead of winter. My power is pretty much limitless in these conditions. It’s easy to get used to it. So when winter ends…”

Derek finishes for him, understanding lighting up his features.

“You get complacent and make mistakes. Or try to freeze an entire lake.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. It was a stupid thing to do. He knows it now, and he knew it back then too.

“It was before we got the skating rink. Lydia wanted to ice skate. I wanted to impress her. I froze the lake, put myself into a fever coma, and it melted within the 15 minutes it took Deaton to find me.”

Derek laughs softly before turning his wry grin to Stiles.

“Why do I get the feeling that if you ever did make it to the skating rink that day I wouldn’t have liked the outcome?”

Stiles grins and clamps a hand on his shoulder. Derek doesn’t seem to mind. Stiles' fingers are quickly coming up to a warmer body temperature. Huh.

“I would have frozen you and your little pack of fur balls up to your necks and practiced my slapshot.”

That gets Derek’s attention. Stiles can see him starting to wonder. Stiles heads his unasked questions off.

“I’m not like Iceman from the X-Men or anything. I can’t freeze my whole body or make like ice bridges. I mean I can make ice bridges, but I need a bridge to ice first, but you get the idea.”

Derek nods, deep in thought.

“So your only weakness are overexertion and extreme heat?”

Stiles laughs. It’s got a bitter tinge to it.

“I’m not fond of electricity.”

Derek shakes his head ruefully.

“Neither am I.”

Stiles remembers how Scott found Derek when Kate took him. Stiles remembers they way Boyd and Erica were strung up. He remembers…

“I figured it out the hard way. Gerard and his goons tasered me into unconsciousness. It’s how they kidnapped me in the first place. By the time they tossed me in the basement, I had a little strength back. I lost it trying to get Erica down.”

He shudders at the memory.

“I wouldn’t have let some geriatric psycho beat my ass if I wasn’t practically dead on my feet.”

A warm hand rests on his shoulder and squeeze gently. Derek knows exactly what Stiles isn't saying.

“I know.”

Stiles leans into the touch and let’s the snow fall silently around them. It’s a long while before Derek speaks again.

“Do you want to tell the others?”

Stiles blinks at Derek.

“You’re not going to make me?”

He gives him a disapproving look.

“It’s your secret to tell. And you’ve kept plenty of mine. Besides, there is no one on this planet that can make you do anything you don’t want to do, Stiles. It didn’t take me long to figure that out about you at least.”

He grins at Derek before letting it fall. The werewolf catches onto his drastic change in mood easily.

“Do you want to tell them?”

Stiles studies the snow under his feet.

“I don’t know?”

Derek doesn’t press him. He lets him gather his scattered thoughts. He waits. He’s gotten so much better over the last few years.

“I’ve hidden it for so long. And it’s not like it would be useful, them knowing. I’m not under any illusion of grandeur here, man. I can’t do anything a GE appliance couldn’t do. It’s safer for them to not know.”

He can feel Derek tense next to him. His shoulder go stiff.

“Crazy hunters. I’m pretty sure that’s why my mom’s parents left Poland. Maybe it’s why my mom moved out to California. Shorter winters, shorter time to expose herself.”

“We will keep you safe.”

He snorts at Derek.

“I can keep myself safe.”

Derek fixes him with a stern glare and a heavy frown. Stiles rolls his eyes.

“I know you guys would. You have, and you will. But it’s safer for them not knowing.”

Stiles is gearing up to fight Derek on this. He has a long list of reasons why keeping this a secret is safer for everyone involved. He’s prepared to threaten to freeze his balls off if he needs to. But Derek just nods.

“Okay.”

Stiles blinks. His arguments evaporate like snowflakes when they hit sunlight.

“Okay?”

Derek nods again and gives him a wry grin.

“But if Scott tries to start his Christmas Eve snowball fight tradition again, you’re gonna be on my team.”

Stiles holds out a hand for Derek to dap.

“Alpha’s going down.”

* * *

A week later finds them sitting shoulder to shoulder in front of Melissa McCall’s’ sofa dressed in the most tackiest Christmas sweaters he’s ever seen (and he owns one that sings Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer) with two of the largest mugs of Scott’s Abuela’s hot chocolate. The others are too busy shoveling Melissa’s driveway to join them. That’s the reward for losing the snowball fight. Stiles’ reward is getting to replay Isaac falling flat on his face after icing over the ground his was running on.

It was so worth using his powers for. He nudges Derek’s shoulder and raises his glass.

“To an even playing field.”

They’ve been friends for years, and Stiles can count the times Derek has smiled, genuinely smiled, in his presence, on his fingers. It’s just a normal smile. But Derek has these laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, and his hair is soft and still damp from the snow. Being on the receiving end of that smile makes Stiles feel warmer than the sweater and cocoa combined. Derek gently touches his mug to Stiles’.

“An even playing field, and to Jack.”

Stiles laughs even though, for some reason, he thinks things just went a little uneven in his world.

“Yeah, to Jack.”


	2. Chapter 2

Christmas break doesn’t last as long as Stiles would have liked. Before he knows it, he’s hugging his dad goodbye and is climbing into his jeep with Scott and Kira. They’re probably on campus for a little bit less than 48 hours when they notice that something just isn’t right.

Kira keeps short circuiting the entire floor of her dorm. Allison has successfully defended two people from being assaulted on campus. Scott has saved a dog, a turtle, and a person from being hit by a car. Besides feeling like he’s 16 again and growing into his limbs by tripping on everything, Stiles has frozen a computer, literally. It’s frozen over like something out of The Day After Tomorrow. He’ll donate money to the math lab later, he seriously will. But this is the last strike in the long list of weird shit.

Their floor mates have also complained about this weird funk that settled over Berkeley’s campus during break. One of the guys at the end of their hall has suddenly started to stutter again, after years of working toward and learning how to overcome it. One girl on the floor above them, a YouTube famous beauty guru, has to wear an eye patch for a week because she scratched her cornea trying to put on winged liner. They need to figure out what the hell is going on.

It’s even odd that they all meet at the same time in the middle of Scott and Stiles’ dorm lobby. Allison’s clothes and hair are disheveled. Kira is very carefully keeping her hands to herself. Scott is scenting the air and looks like he has his Alpha ears on, listening to everything in the room. Stiles pulls out his cellphone and ignores how it’s freezing cold, even to him, as he opens his speed dial.

“Hey, we’ve got a problem.”

The entire lobby blacks out. People sitting around in the communal area start complaining. Kira’s voice rises above the people moving around, filtering outside or up to rooms to see what’s going on.

“Sorry.”

Kira hasn’t had issues with controlling herself since the beginning of their senior year. Like all supernatural beings in their age group in Beacon Hills, she had to learn control fast to survive long enough to even get to college. Stiles is lucky that there isn’t any light because he thinks his breath just frosted when it came out of his mouth. He nearly drops his phone, but Scott’s arm shoots out and catches it. Stiles fumbles it back up to his ear.

“Yeah, make that a big problem.”

He quickly explains what’s been happening, but the only sound Stiles can hear on the other end is the sound of a car starting.

“I’ll call Deaton and Lydia on the way down.”

Stiles takes a breath to quell his rising anxiety as the lights start to flicker back on only for the fire and security alarms to start blaring. Scott grabs at his ears. Derek must be able to hear his rising heartbeat because he raises his voice over the line to get Stiles’ attention.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Hurry.”

* * *

When Derek does get there it is to Stiles holding a bag of frozen pizza rolls to his head while flipping through an old lore book from Deaton with one hand. Allison is cleaning up what looks like a cut on her forearm. Kira is sitting crossed legged in the middle of the dorm room meditating with Scott. His eyes have been Alpha red for an hour, but he hasn’t been flinching as much when he hears somebody hurt themselves somewhere else in the dorm.

Stiles glances up to him and offers him a grin. He knows that Derek can see through it. He can see the panic in his eyes. He can read the tension in his shoulders. Stiles taps the book balanced on his knee. There is only one thing that fits what’s been going on. Fey, for all that they love allusions, don’t like it when humans lie or try to trick them. These Fey see students overcoming their teenage issues as trickery. And the only reason why Scott and Kira can’t sense them, why Allison and Stiles can’t track them, is because this particular species of Fey have a special talent. They are freaking air spirits. They are literally made up of air.

“Slyphs?”

Derek nods and holds up a brown paper bag.

“Slyphs. Lydia said this and a banishing spell should kick them back to their plane of existence.”

Stiles tries to nods, stops when the pain flares up again. He wasn’t lying when he said he tripped in the bathroom, it was just after he froze the sink solid when trying to wash his hands. It melted when Scott came rushing in to get their first aid kit for Allison who got caught in the crossfire of Kira accidentally blowing up her phone. Scott, now standing, grabs his beat up denim jacket from his bed.

“When we came here, we threw off the balance. They figured they could play around when we were gone.”

Stiles tosses his makeshift ice pack back in their small fridge. He’s pretty sure it’s more than frozen, but he did actually want to eat them.

“Let’s go show them what happens to the mice that play while the wolf’s away.”

Kira snorts, but slips her katana over her head. Derek rolls his eyes as Allison starts to follow them out. He hangs back to talk to Stiles quietly.

“How are you holding up?”

Stiles blows out a long breath. The air is frosty. Derek looks just as worried as Stiles feels.

“Could be better, could be worse.”

Derek lifts the brown paper bag and tucks it under one arm.

“I should probably hang onto this then.”

Stiles laughs.

“Yeah, probably a good idea.”

* * *

They find as secluded a place on campus as they can to complete the banishing ritual. It’s nothing hard, per se, but the elements always have to be placed specifically. Stiles is also kind of shocked that the words never change, except that one time he had to say it in Polish because of the culture difference with the Mare. Derek and Scott help him lay out the objects in the circle Allison’s drawn in the dirt. He cuts open the box of salt with a pocketknife and dumps it in the corner that holds North. The sage is next on his right at East. He digs a shallow hole, twists the cap off of the bottle of water, and gently places it down at South. West is the fun part. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes, but Derek snatches them out of Scott’s hand. He opens the pack, pulls out his trusty lighter, and lights one. Stiles rolls his eyes. Derek rolls his right back.

“These things won’t kill me.”

Stiles can only watch as Derek drags on the cigarette, catching the ashes in his hand like it’s nothing before lighting a second one. Secretly, Stiles is glad. His hands are so cold he’s actually afraid he would have frozen the cigarette solid if he tried. Scott walks around the circle, making sure it isn’t broken as Derek leans over and dumps the ashes into the shallow hole Stiles has made for West. Stiles rises and looks around too. Everything looks right, he did it like Lydia dictated to Derek even though Stiles has done it half a dozen times before. He looks back to his pack and grins.

“I seriously did not expect to be using the quad to do a banishing. Zombies vs. Humans, sure, but not this.”

“Let’s get this over with before someone sees.”

Stiles can’t fault Allison’s logic. They already have a reputation for being bit strange on campus. He’ll be damned though, if he has to go through his undergraduate life with people thinking he’s some kind of weird naturalist. He closes his eyes and concentrates, pulling on his spark and solidifying his will of _go the fuck back where you came from_. It is also the time when things generally start to go straight to hell.

This time is no different. It seems the Sylphs have figured out what they are about to do. It's weird not being able to feel the wind in the circle but to see it wiping wildly enough for Allison to cover her eyes and pull Kira down with her to avoid a branch to the head. Derek and Scott have claws out, but they are useless against wind spirits that don’t have corporeal bodies.

“Stiles, do it!”

He can barely hear Derek over the noise. He can almost see the Sylphs, little more than mist and wind, but powerful enough to start moving faster, little cuts appearing on his friends’ skin. The noise inside the circle is nearly deafening. Stiles drags the pocketknife over a finger, his pinky because it’ll suck less as it heals as he’s learned through experience. _The caster gives himself to the circle._ He still thinks it’s messed up that it always has to be blood. He going to try it with spit one of these days, just to see.

He thinks he can hear Derek yelling, but it’s hard to concentrate with the fact that Sylphs have finally understood that they can’t touch Stiles in the circle. But they can however remove the air from it.

“Banish now with spark and will. Banish now, forever, still.”

It’s getting hard to breathe. He plants his good hand on the ground to stop from falling over and ruining the elements. Ice forms around his fingers and spreads so fast that Stiles can’t stop it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He takes as deep a breath as he can manage.

“All that's wrong and out of place. All to where you belong with no trace."

He slams his cut hand down in the center of the four points. Everything goes dead silent and then black.

* * *

He comes to gasping, thigh deep in water at the edge of a lake. He turns around wildly, just barely managing to keep his balance in the water. Then he registers that he’s standing in water and begins to trudge his way toward shore. At the opposite end of the lake there’s a dock and a beach. This side is all small rocks and grass.

“The hell?”

He pats himself down roughly, happy to feel that everything is where it should be on his person. He checks his pockets and finds his phone safe and sound. He's going to rub Isaac's face in it, too. It was worth shelling out for a Lifeproof case. He takes a second to get his heart rate under control. He feels warm, from using his powers most likely, but he feels in control. He doesn’t freeze the lake over when he touches the water, so he counts it as a win. As much of a win as getting dragging along with a banishing spell is.

He dials Scott who answers halfway on the first ring.

“Dude! What was that? Are you okay!?”

Stiles runs a hand through his hair and nods.

"I have no idea, but I'm fine. A little dizzy, but fine. I think I’m at Lake Anza. It looks familiar, but I put the GPS on my phone on. All you have to do is track-"

Scott cuts him off.

"Derek is already headed your way. We're following."

Stiles blinks.

"What the hell?"

Allison’s voice is in the background. She found his location. He is at Lake Anza. She is also telling Kira not to forget Derek’s pants. The girls seem to forget about them quite often. (And Stiles really can’t blame them. Derek does naked really, _really_ well.)

"His nose is better than mine."

Scott's the True Alpha. He's like the Optimus Prime of werewolves. They only way that Derek has better senses than him is when he's in his wolf form. Stiles sighs. He’s suddenly exhausted, probably a little to do with his powers slipping his control and a lot to do with performing the banishing and being dragged on for the ride.

If Stiles could describe what it felt like to piggyback off of a banishing, the closest thing he can think of it is like being tossed into an antigravity chamber while that is being tossed down a pitch black waterslide. He shudders.

“Dude, just get here and try not to hurt my Jeep. I can hear you grinding into third.”

He hangs up before Scott can argue about his shifting skills. Stiles focuses on the fact that he may or may not have outed himself when he froze the circle, and he is also soaking wet from mid-thigh down, and it's nearly 1 in the morning in January. He’d probably have hypothermia if he were a regular human. He pulls off his shoes and socks and slides down to sit at the base of a tree. He tugs off his jacket to use it as a makeshift blanket later when the Scott and the others to arrive. For now, he really needs for his body temperature to drop.

"That is still a weird thing to think.”

He snorts at himself and just breathes. It’s not as bad as he expects because it is relatively cold enough that he’s been manipulating the temperature and not his powers. Plain dumb luck is always Stiles favorite kind of luck.

It’s not long before there is a rustling from the bushes, and he opens his eyes to see a jet black wolf with jewel blues eyes padding toward him.

“S'up, De-Dude! Give a guy some warning!”

Stiles tosses his jacket at Derek. He smirks, but holds it in front of himself. His smirk falls slightly as he leans forward to lay his hand on Stiles’ forehead. Stiles slaps it away. He still thinks how weird (and he’ll admit badass) it is that Derek can just change in the blink of an eye. But he really has no room to talk about a person’s weirder abilities.

“I’m fine. More tired from performing the banishing than anything. Did the others…”

Derek shakes his head and frowns down at him while checking him over.

“No, I wouldn’t have even noticed if I wasn’t looking for it. It faded fast after you left, then I started chasing your scent.”

Stiles drags a hand down his face and heaves a relieved sigh. He swats at the fingers pinching his wet jeans into his shin without looking up.

“Cut it out. I’ll pretend whenever they’re close enough to expect it.”

Derek huffs, but doesn’t argue. Stiles moves his hand and asks what’s been bugging him since he was successfully splinched to a lake nearly 4 miles from campus.

“How they hell was that even possible? I’ve never been sucked into a banishing before.”

Derek looks thoughtful for a second.

“I think it’s because they knew you were different. They didn’t think it was fair that you were banishing them for having magic when you had it too. The held on until they couldn’t anymore.”

Stiles mulls it over. It’s plausible, but until he can talk to Deaton, he grimaces, he won’t know for sure. If that's the case, then they have been ridiculously lucky so far.

“I think that it’s about time that Kira or Allison learn how to do these things. We're bound to run into something that responds better to French or Japanese or Korean. And hey, you and Scott both know Spanish. Lydia knows like four kinds of Latin plus Greek and Russian. I think Liam is taking German.”

He grins up at Derek.

“If we threaten his scarf collection, I bet we can make Isaac learn Farsi or something.”

"Farsi?"

"Yeah, we can never be too prepared."

Derek offers him a small grin and shake of his head. Suddenly he tenses, but relaxes when he registers what he’s hearing.

“They’re about a mile out.”

Then he’s throwing the jacket over Stiles head. By the time Stiles gets it down, Derek is a wolf again. He uses his teeth to pull the jacket back over Stiles’ bent up legs then he leans into him. Stiles can feel the warmth almost immediately, and it clicks in his head. Derek is helping him with his cover.

Stiles reaches out and rests a hand on Derek’s massive shoulder.

“You know I’m not that great with this kind of thing, but thank you. For this, for everything. It’s nice to have someone else to talk to.”

Derek just huffs and leans more heavily into him. Stiles doesn’t really mind, even when Derek’s wolfy weight makes his feet fall asleep.


End file.
